Pack Men
On sale
1st September 2011
Price: £12.99
‘That’s why aw this-‘ Cage lifts his lager can, sweeps it round 180 degrees. ‘-means so much tay a man.’
The crowd stamps and claps, a hundred and fifty thousand voices blending into one.
In 2008 Glasgow Rangers FC reached a major European final. It was held in Manchester, a short hop from Scotland into England. Cue a colossal invasion: the largest movement of Scots over the border in history and the first time in hundreds of years that an English city was taken over. Chaos reigned.
Pack Men is the fictional story of three pals and one child trapped inside this powderkeg. In a city rocking with beer, brotherhood and sectarianism, the boys struggle to hold onto their friendship, as they turn on each other and the police turn on them. And somehow one of them has to disclose a secret which he knows the others won’t want to hear…
With this novel, one of Scotland’s leading young writers has created a scuffed comedy about male un-bonding and Britain unravelling.
The crowd stamps and claps, a hundred and fifty thousand voices blending into one.
In 2008 Glasgow Rangers FC reached a major European final. It was held in Manchester, a short hop from Scotland into England. Cue a colossal invasion: the largest movement of Scots over the border in history and the first time in hundreds of years that an English city was taken over. Chaos reigned.
Pack Men is the fictional story of three pals and one child trapped inside this powderkeg. In a city rocking with beer, brotherhood and sectarianism, the boys struggle to hold onto their friendship, as they turn on each other and the police turn on them. And somehow one of them has to disclose a secret which he knows the others won’t want to hear…
With this novel, one of Scotland’s leading young writers has created a scuffed comedy about male un-bonding and Britain unravelling.
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Reviews
'Bissett's ear for cut and thrust, for chiv-sharp wit and tinder-dry insult is incisive, pitch perfect, informed...the writing is subtle, well-paced, authentic and compelling...from the start the story transports you aboard its wheeled madhouse in the company of a colourful band of yahoos that Geoffrey Chaucer would be pleased to have invented'
"A unique and special novel. I honestly haven't read anything as impressive as this
from a Scottish writer in yonks"
'Bissett writes subtly, intelligently yet also passionately about men...an outstanding novel'
'The largest Scottish army ever to invade England was not led by William Wallace: it was the 150,000 Rangers fans who descended on Manchester for the 2008 UEFA cup final at Old Trafford. Bissett was there, and his novel vividly recalls the so-called Battle of Piccadilly...He casts an unsparing eye over the sectarian pollution of Scottish society'
'Told with narrative flair and demotic brilliance, this is a hugely funny, ruthlessly honest and desperately necessary book'
'If Scotland's father of working class consciousness James Kelman had a literary son it might be Alan Bissett...funny, irreverent and moving, let's hope [Pack Men] gets the readership and recognition it deserves'
'Pack Men is a wry, entertaining and mature work...Bissett succeeds in making us root for the most unlikely of antiheroes, even as he implodes'
'Pack Men should be required reading for both sets of supporters...Along with the sectarian backdrop, Bissett tackles questions of personal identity, male bonding, sexuality and above all class in a narrative that sneaks much of that subject matter under the surface of a blistering, adrenaline-fuelled romp'